Thoughts on the future of workplace communication

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Earlier today I spoke on a live webcast on the Future of Workplace Communication as part of Viocorp’s Future Forum series.

I took notes during the panel session and posted these live on my blog right after the event. I took notes while the other panellists were speaking: Nicky Wakefield, head of human capital at Deloitte, Philip Cronin, general manager of Intel Australia, and Oscar Trimboli, head of the information workers group at Microsoft.

I wasn’t able to take notes while I was speaking myself, so having had a look at the panel discussion which is now archived and can be viewed at the Viocorp site (requires registration), I’ve written out some of what I said during the discussion.

10:50 – 14:00

Workplace is not a good term to refer to the future – people will be working from anywhere so workplaces will have less impact than they have today. In the bigger context we also have to question whether organizations as we know them today will exist. Transaction costs are going down, meaning that moving forward, organizations will have to justify why they exist. There will be many business models bringing together loosely coupled talent and processes.

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Thought leadership in technology – five key services to influence clients and increase sales

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It is sometimes difficult to describe what my companies do. That is now a little bit easier, as we have created a flyer describing the key services of Advanced Human Technologies, focused on clients in the technology and media sector. The flyer does not mention our publishing and ventures activities, but covers the kind of consulting we do for vendors. Our Enterprise 2.0 flyer describes our work for corporate clients on implementing Enterprise 2.0.

Thought Leadership in Technology – Advanced Human Technologies

I hope it’s useful for those that want to know more about what we do (or may even want to engage us!).

I will later share some snapshots of what Future Exploration Network and The Insight Exchange are up to, to give a better picture of the group and how it fits together.

Will the future of social networking be open and distributed? Here comes Plexus

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I just caught up with my neighbor and fellow futurist Mark Pesce, who over a coffee at our local briefed me on his new project Plexus, which he publicly announced at his recent keynote at Pycon Australia, for Python developers. His excellent speech, titled How Not to be Seen, is below, and the transcript on Mark’s blog.

In his presentation Mark starts with his long relationship with programming and finally moves on to describe his project Plexus, which will provide a new platform for social networks.

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Revisiting the Web 2.0 Framework for insights on the web landscape today

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I have just been requested permission by London School of Economics to use my Web 2.0 Framework in their Management and Innovation of eBusiness program for the next four years. The first part of the framework is below, and the industry landscape further down the page.

Web 2.0 Framework

Click on the image for the original description and full pdf

I’m delighted that the framework is still seen as relevant and useful over 3 years after it was created in May 2007. Certainly the original post continues to get plenty of traffic, not least because an image from the framework still appears on the front page of a Google search for ‘Web 2.0’. The phrase ‘Web 2.0’ has been largely replaced with ‘social media’, ‘cloud’ and similar terms, but the underlying concepts remain valid in understanding what is going on today.

I thought it would be worth reviewing the framework today to see what is still current and what I would change.

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No more checking in: why public facial recognition may take off

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minority-report-ads.jpgWe all know that processing power has for many years increased exponentially and continues to do so. This essentially means that any processing-intensive task you can imagine will eventually be possible.

Facial recognition happens to be a task that humans are hard-wired to be exceptionally good at. While computers struggled at this for a long time, it is now an entirely viable technology in controlled conditions, as when people are walking through turnstiles or gates.

The facial recognition used at the 2001 Super Bowl was successful enough to apparently nab 19 people with pending arrest warrants, while facial recognition is now commonly used in border security.

It becomes a lot harder when people’s faces are not viewed from the front, however to a large degree that’s where the increased processing power comes in handy.

Mark Cuban says that he has just invested in a company that uses video to identify how many people are in a given area, which can be useful for safety, security, and traffic control.

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Breaking: Facebook bans doll nipples on profile images

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My wife Victoria Buckley just received a message from Facebook asking her to change the profile image on the Victoria Buckley Jewellery Facebook page, threatening to close the page as it did not conform to its ‘terms and conditions’.

Presumably the were referring to condition3. 7. You will not post content that…contains nudity…. referring to the profile image of a beautiful doll touching one of Victoria’s rings.

VBJ_doll.jpg

Above is the offensive image. If you go to the Victoria Buckley Jewellery Facebook page you will now see a censored image so she doesn’t get banned, along with her close to 1,000 fans. (Though if you click through to the Photos page and the Ophelia Enchanted Doll collection you can see more stunning images of the doll).

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Asia is now the #1 and fastest growing region for Twitter; US down to just 25% of total tweets

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Micro-messaging processing company Semiocast has just released research showing that Asia has overtaken North America as the biggest user of Twitter, with 37% of total tweets.

semiocast_study_001.png

Source: Semiocast

In June 2009 the US still accounted for 55% of tweets, in February 2010 statistics showed that half of tweets were in languages other than English, and by April 2010 US tweets accounted for 37% of tweets. The rise of “international” (as Americans describe the planet excluding USA) and corresponding decline of the US share is shown in the chart below. Today’s study shows that US tweets have in the three months since then fallen to just 25% of the total. This is not because the US is slowing, it is because the rest of the world and particularly Asia is taking up Twitter at an enormous pace.

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A Declaration of Interdependence

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A just got an email from Tiffany Schlain, who had just seen my post on how hyper-connectivity is literally bringing the networks to life. I know of Tiffany as the Founder of the very influential Webby Awards. What I didn’t know is that she is also a filmmaker. Tiffany pointed me to the film she’s currently working on: Connected: A Declaration of Interdependence. The awesome trailer is below – well worth watching. It simply poses the question we are all facing.

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Leaders in social networks usage: Australia by time, Brazil by reach

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In January I looked at the just-released Nielsen data on global social media usage, and wrote Australians are #1 globally in usage of social media: Why?.

New data from Nielsen shows an updated picture from April 2010, including the proportion of people online in each country who are using social networks.

socialnetworkusage_Apr10.jpg

Click on image for large version

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Keynote at Gartner: Driving Business Results Through Personal Networks

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A little while ago I gave a keynote at the Gartner Symposium. Gartner looks to its analysts to share their deep research at their events. It also invites a handful of external speakers to bring a lighter and more entertaining – though still pragmatic – approach and style.

I suggested the topic of Driving Business Results Through Personal Network, which can readily be made fun and interesting, but is also extremely practical for senior technology executives. It was a broad-ranging keynote, ranging across topics including why we need to understand the Bacon number, why boundary spanners are so critical for organizations, the long tail of sexual activity, how to enhance serendipity, and steps to being an energizing leader.

Inset into the presentation were two sets of recommendations, on building personal online networks and on enhancing organizational networks. At the risk of taking them out of the supporting context, here they are:

BuildingOnlineNetworks.jpg

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